Woolly mammoth facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Woolly mammoths Temporal range: Pleistocene – Holocene
Woolly mammoth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	†Mammuthus
Binomial name
Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799)

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), is a species of mammoth. This animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia. The best preserved carcasses in Siberia. They are perhaps the most well known species of mammoth.

This mammoth species was first recorded in deposits of a former glaciation in Eurasia, perhaps 150,000 years ago.

The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who hunted them. Their bones and tusks were used as tools, and dwellings. Mammoths were also hunted for food. The species disappeared from most of its range at the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 years ago), with a dwarfed race still living on Wrangel Island until about 1700 BC.

Description

Woolly mammoths were large elephants that lived during the ice ages. Cave paintings of the woolly mammoth have been found in caves in France and Spain. Woolly mammoths are tightly related to the Asian Elephant.

Images for kids

• 

  Copy of an interpretation of the "Adams mammoth" carcass from around 1800, with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's handwriting

• 

  1930s illustration of the lectotype molars; the left one is now lost.

• 

  Georges Cuvier's 1796 comparison between the mandible of a woolly mammoth (bottom left and top right) and an Indian elephant (top left and bottom right)

• 

  Model at the Royal BC Museum

• 

  Skull from Poland with one broken and one downward spiralled tusk

• 

  Molar from Font de Champdamoy, France, Musée Georges-Garret

• 

  Life restoration of fauna during the Pleistocene epoch in northern Spain, by Mauricio Antón, 2004

• 

  Mandibles and lower molars, Barcelona

• 

  Male tusk with signs of wear

• 

  Cross sections of African elephant and woolly mammoth tusks; growth rings can be used to determine age

• 

  Mural depicting a herd walking near the Somme River in France, by Charles R. Knight, 1916

• 

  Woolly mammoth engraved on ivory, discovered by Édouard Lartet in 1864

• 

  Reconstructed bone hut based on finds in Mezhyrich, exhibited in Japan

• 

  Palaeolithic projectile points made from mammoth ivory, Pekárna cave

• 

  Map showing climatic suitability for woolly mammoths in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene of Eurasia: red is increasing suitability, green is decreasing suitability. Black points are records of mammoths, black lines are the northern limit of humans

• 

  Mounted "family group" from Tomsk

• 

  Skull discovered by fishermen in the North Sea ("Doggerland"), at Celtic and Prehistoric Museum, Ireland

• 

  The calf "Lyuba", Royal BC Museum

• 

  Model in State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart

• 

  Elephants are highly gregarious, as shown by these Asian elephants

See also

In Spanish: Mamut lanudo para niños